“Those are very different things.”

I disagreed. Everything I wanted made me sad.

Summer, 1976:

+++My parents late twenties, newly dating, visit the Maroon Bells wilderness outside of Aspen. These two people, John and Suzie, are in love, will inevitably conceive my brother and I, and will return to this place again and again though neither of them know it yet.

12 SeptemberA man in a torn grey jacket staggers onto the bus.+++“It’s the postmodern god. It’s the postmodern god,” he says to the bus driver.

People sang loud at Keswick, so I sang loud, and I didn’t fall asleep during the sermons as I often did back home. I read along when scripture was quoted instead of flipping to the verses about boobs in Song of Songs.

And I cannot blame him for it—to acknowledge our past is to recognize that we were someone else once; we are creatures that lose pounds of skin throughout our lives, so who is to say how it is we regenerate.

They talk me into Twizzlers from the vending machine before we head back to the silver minivan that rides low under the weight it carries: boxes, crates, computer, blankets and pillows, toys, and a hamper, all crammed into the backseat in under an hour.